We got to catch the IMAX showing of Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. Your mission if you decide to accept it is to read the review and decide if you’re into a adrenaline rushed, spy versus spy thriller.

The film is directed by Brad Bird, which directed many of Pixar’s hit films such as Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Up. It begs the question what is his directorship going to look like translated to a live film and working with live actors. In short the outcome is good.

His ability to keep the films focus is always on point and well executed. The pace is fast, action-packed and even hilarious in some cases thanks to sticky situations involving Simon Pegg’s character Benji, the latest edition to the IMF team.

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol manages to deliver a summer blockbuster feel in the middle of winter and that’s the kind of fire I hoping to cozy up while watching it.

The feature actors also do their part in making Ghost Protocol a smooth mission. Tom Cruise of course does a steller job being the veteran IMF lead, but what about the three newest members of the team?

Simon Pegg is known for bringing lively humor and charm into his films that are undeniable. His character ‘Benji’ is the teams lead tech agent controlling risky devices that make or break the team’s mission. In some cases he knows exactly what he’s doing but in other cases he gets mixed up in his own gadgets, almost like a cat playing with yarn….he gets completely tangled up! When paired up with Ethan Hunt the contrast between the two of them are classic.

Paula Patton plays ‘Jane’ a field operative with a vendetta. She’s disciplined, cool under fire and presents the right allure to her targets as a undercover agent.

My personal favorite has to be Jeremy Kenner. He plays a defense analyst with a secret. His character agent ‘Brandt’ serves as intelligence over the operations of the mission but he prooves to be just as effective a field operative. His character’s role varies through the film and you become impressed with the jobs he has to deal with, along with the burden that follows him as well.

The story takes the team through Russia, Dubai and India. They never make a pit stop in the states, but there really isn’t very much time for that with world war 3 over the horizion. Brad Bird applies novelty with interesting quirks throughout the movie such as some of the odd places you might find a electronic mission breifing system for team members and what you have to do to access them. It’s little nuances like that which keeps the beat of the movie interesting.

Mission Impossible Ghost protocol has great action , suspenseful stunts and humor. It’s a early holiday present, a summer blockbuster to keep our spirits very merry.

SPOLIER: Below is the run down of the movie, avert your eyes now if you don’t want it’s cover blown!

The movie starts off with a battle of agents one IMF agent named Hanaway played by Josh Halloway of ‘Lost’. It’s a amazing mid-air gun fight where Hanaway manages to kill two opposing operatives and toss capsulized self inflating crash pad ahead of him before he hits the pavement. He brushes off the dust and starts to get away as a woman in black appears and guns him down taking the information he was carrying.

In the next scene the IMF have sent agents to help liberate Ethan Hunt from a Russian prison. The team manages to release prisoners to help start a riot to cover for Ethan’s own escape. Ethan won’t go that easily though, he has a friend he wants to break out named Bogdan in which he punches and kicks thier way out to freedom assisted by Benji who has broken into the prison’s gating system and Jane who uses a ultrasonic device to create a hole for them to escape.

Escaping into a van with the rest of the IMF team, Bogdan realizes he doesn’t know much about his friend ‘Sergi’ (Ethan’s given name in the prison) in return Ethan shoots him with a tranquilizer dart and sends him off with his own people in a van driving along side them. Ethan explains Bogdan was a helpful informant and he could not let him die in the prison.

The team finds it’s first mission, infiltrate the Kremlin. Both Ethan and Benji have to dress up as military personnel, Ethan dressed as a high ranking General and Benji as his assistant. They make it past Kremlin security and use a iPad to help create a hilarious illusion against the guard who is protecting a archive room that the team needs to get into. Upon breaching the room Ethan discovers the data they need is gone and learn another team is conducting a mission of thier own. The mystery thickens as radio chatter is overheard and security starts to lock down on Kremlin facilities. The IMF team makes a run for it aborting the mission but not before bumping into a mysterious man holding a satchel. Ethan and Benji split up and Ethan changes his attire to look like a tourist. A explosion occurs taking out a huge section of the Kremlin and knocking out Ethan during his escape.

When Ethan awakens he finds himself in a Russian hospital handcuffed to a bed rail. The Russian goverment accuses him and America of blowing up the Kremlin. Ethan is on the run and makes his way to a ledge where he zips down a line to land on a moving truck. He falls off with a imperfect landing and is stunned, his would be pursuer is just as stunned that he just perfomed the radical escape and reacts slowly to go after him.

Ethan is later picked up by the IMF Secratary of Defense (Tom Wilkinson) he informs Ethan that diplomacy between nations are shutting down and the President of the United States is ordering Ghost Protocol, all IMF actions must cease. Ethan shares information about the mysterious man in the Kremlin and reveals that he is a old mark in the IMF database by the name of Hendricks (aka Cobalt) a ex russian war analyst who believes that the path to peace is a nuclear war between the US and Russia. The Secretary informs Ethan that he is to be brought in under charges of terrorism as a rogue agent, but the Secretary gives him another choice to accept a secret-secret mission to assault the secretary and his analyst in a attempt to escape and rendevous with the IMF team to find and shut down Hendrick’s operation.

Before any of this can happen the Secretary’s car is assaulted by a reign of gun fire killing the Secretary and the driver. The SUV drives right into a canal in which the assualt team riddles the water with bullets. Ethan plants a flare on the dead driver and sends him down stream. The shooters start to fire at the odd looking target and Ethan and analyst Brandt escape. It turns out that the assault team was sent by Ethan’s original pursuant at the hospital, Sidorov a Russian agent.

Ethan and Brandt rendevous with the rest of the IMF team in a moving train, one of the cargo sections is actually a IMF hideout. The team figures out that Hanaway’s assassin Sabine Moreau is trying to sell missile codes to Hendricks. A plan is concocted where both Sabines and Hendricks teams will be intercepted and fooled into believing that they are dealing with one another for the sale of the data when in fact it will be the IMF team who will split up and make the deal with them to take back the missile codes.

The code sale is discovered to be made in Dubai in a high rise luxury hotel. The team has to disguise one of the hotel floors to look identical to the one where the code sale will be made. To do this they need to control the hotel’s operations electronically but being in Ghost Protocol they don’t have any support to get access to the hotel’s system,s hence Ethan has to venture outside the hotel wearing ‘spiderman’ like gloves. He makes it up eleven stories with one glove (the other one fails) and gets the system to connect with Benji’s controls. Getting down is a different story with the codes buyer and seller on their way in just a few minutes. Ethan ties a roll of industrial wire harness around his waste and jumps out the window to stop short of the window he came out of. He decides to make a running jump along the building’s side and leaps in the air cutting off the harness, he crashes into the edge of the entrance but his team catches and reels him in.

The team splits up with Ethan and Brandt posing as buyers with Sabine who wants diamonds for the codes that they don’t have. During the illusion Benji poses as room service with a fake prosthetic arm to help conceal his real one and steal the diamonds the real buyers have brought for Sabine, he passes it off to Ethan’s room a level below so that they can get Sabine to show the codes. Brandt is setup with a eye camera to snap photos of the code documents into a printer briefcase where Jane will be selling the codes to the real buyers. Brandt blinks twice to take pictures of the codes and the documents are printed in a high-tech briefcase a floor above creating what Jane needs to keep the buyers enticed.

Unfortunately Sabine notices the eye camera on Brandt and all hell breaks loose, Unusually Brandt displays impressive combat techniques for a simple analyst and Ethan takes notice. Sabine runs out the door. Janes business transaction has concluded and now they need to follow the buyers to get to Hendricks who needs the codes. Jane ends up being called to take down Sabine and Ethan goes after the buyer.
Jane captures Sabine and Benji is left to guard her while Jane tries to make contact with Ethan who is now in pursuit of the buyer in a oncoming sandstorm!

Through a chase by foot and car in the sandstorm (which has gotta be horrible for a car’s paint job) Ethan loses the buyer who rips off his mask to reveal that he was actually Hendricks all along, OUCH! Oh and Sabine tries to get away and winds up getting kicked out the window Ethan climbed out of initially to gain access to the hotel’s computer system. Brandt blames Jane for having no restraint in kicking Sabine out the window due to the murder of agent Hanaway.

The mission is botched and everyone is reeling in self pity, but Ethan realizes that for the codes and missiles to work Hendricks will have to use a satellite to activate the warheads. Ethan questions Brandt about the combat training he had and Brandt denies it, to proove his point Ethan points a gun at Brandt who reactively disarms and puts the guns sights back on Ethan, point made. Ethan leaves to search for more clues while Jane and Benji ask Brandt about his history.

Bradnt reveals he was responsible for the death of Ethan’s wife. He was assigned to protect the couple and on the day his wife was abducted and killed Ethan went out for a run in the morning. Brandt assigned two of his men to protect his wife and Brandt would cover Ethan. When Brandt returned his men were knocked out and Ethan’s wife was missing. He was relieved of his duty and put into a a desk job.

Ethan finds his old friend Bogdan who introduces him to a arms dealer. The arms dealer tells Ethan that there is one military grade satelite that he sold to a media mogul in Mumbai India named Brij Nath (Anil Kapoor). The arms dealer stocks the team with weapons, a jet and crazy neon sports car from BMW.

The team infiltrates a party hosted by Brij in a attempt to extract the satelite codes by playing up Brij’s weakness for mysterious women. Jane and Ethan are dressed up in formal attire and search out Brij.

In the mean time Benji and Brandt need to get access to a server component in Brij’s media communication building that controls the satelite. It is buried many levels down in a massive electronics wind tunnel. There is a gigantic fan there to keep all the electronics cool and Brandt is forced to put on a magnetic suit that will stop his fall right before hitting the fan! Benji controls the repulsing magnetic unit which looks like a solar RC car and catches Brandt, later driving him to the right hardware to upload the access code Brij has.

Jane gets the codes from Brij, but they’re too late. Hendricks is also there on the scene and he returns the satelite to its military specifications through a usb data stick. A Russian submarine occupied with Hendricks symapthizers launch a missile and the codes are activated. The missile is headed for San Francisco.

Ethan has Benji locate the source of the uploaded transmission and they haul ass in the neon BMW. Both teams make it to the location and Hendricks has his henchman, Wistrom tear the servers apart so that they can’t abort the missile. Jane gets to the scene first and gets into a gunfight with Wistrom and gets shot, but not fatally. The power goes out in the building moments after, damn that Wistrom cut the power as a second way of stopping the abort capability. Benji repairs the server but needs the power turned on to give abort capability back. Brandt looks for a way to turn the power back on and gets ina fight with Wistrom.

During this time Hendricks and Ethan are on a chase and wind up in a very large parking structure that actually moves cars on a central lift. It might be twenty stories tall and would’nt you know it, Hendricks and Ethan start fighting somewhere around the top ready to take spills and broken bones every few stories. Hendricks has the satelite launch terminal in his brief case but it also acts as a abort button. Ethan fights tooth and nail to get it, but Hendricks takes the ultimate plunge literally grabbing the case from Ethan and plunging to his seemingly death.

Brandt overtakes Wistrom in the power room and and abort capability is back and running, the missile is on targeted at the transamerica building for detonation. Ethan needs to get down to the bottom of the parking structure where Hendricks lay fast, so he buckles himself into a car and drives it off the edge hoping the airbags will save him in the fall, and it does! He climbs out of the car (in really bad shape may I add) and opens the case to strike the big red button to abort the missile, as he does it he yells out “Mission Complete”! The warhead is deactivated, it skiffs the transamerica building and lands in the bay. Hendricks is somehow alive, looks as Ethan briefly, then fades out.

The team celebrates back in Seattle where Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) talks about fishing the warhead out of the bay thanks to the IMF team. Ethan thanks his team and offers them permanent positions under his command. Benji and Jane accept and walk away but Brandt refuses to accept. He tells Ethan the truth about his wife and how he was supposed to protect her. Ethan knows the entire story. He eludes to Brandt a secret that his wife is actually alive and it wasn’t Brandt’s job to protect her it was always Ethan’s. Ethan had gone to jail in Russia under the cover story that he had killed six Syberian soldiers in revenge for his wife’s supposed death. A perfect cover up in the eyes of anyone that did not believe she was dead. Brandt asks then if they are ok, and Ethan nods as Brandt accepts his new position in the team.

Off in a distance Ethan steps back and watches his wife enter a store with her co-worker and she looks back at him smiling, Mission Success.